Greengaged

During day four Crafting Mass Production at greengaged last week (full coverage coming soon), Anna Gerber told the story of our day spent with newly founded design agency Workshop, at their letterpress studio in East London. I'm pleased to be able to share a short video of the day, kindly edited by Varvara Zaytseva.

Featuring in the film (in order) are Anna Fidalgo (Crispin Finn), Lawrence Zeegen (Kingston University), Sanky Sankarayya (All of Us /  D&AD), Adam Cheltsov (Sara De Bondt Studio), Greengaged competition winners Matt Mear and Holly Webber, and Workshop Founders Alexander Cooper and Rose Gridneff.

Photographs of the letterpress workshop can be viewed on our greengaged flickr channel and full coverage here .

photo by: Walter Parenteau

What any print designer is interested in is the product that they can hold in their hand at the end of the day; and yet design must now consider the bigger system which that finished product fits within and is born out of. In print terms, about 4.7 million tons of fresh, unused paper is thrown away by UK print companies each year as sometimes large unused off-cuts. 4.7 million tons is an unimaginably large amount; production of each ton of paper requires in the region of 17 trees, 7,000 gallons of water and more energy per ton than glass or steel. Do the maths on the large numbers by all means, but it’s clearly very significant.

On average, paper represents 80% of the carbon footprint of a piece of print, which makes paper one of the largest contributing factors to the environmental performance of a company. Before all the print buyers and designers evacuate the room, there are intelligent approaches that don’t mean doing away with print, by instead making its production much more effective!

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A few months ago, Greengaged curator Anna Gerber and the team at Three Trees Don't Make a Forest were invited to visit London's “local” paper mill: Tullis Russell in Fife, Scotland. Joined by Sion Whellens of Calverts and Luke Nicholson of More Associates, Anna explains how 'the trip made a real impact on us all and got us thinking a lot about how industrial processes are instrumental to and in everything we design. Inspired by the trip, and as part of the Crafting Mass Production event for this year’s Greengaged at the Design Council, Gerber gathered a team of designers to spend the day at Workshop’s new letterpress studio in East London last week.

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As part of our Crafting Mass Production day, we are planning a letterpress workshop run by Alex Cooper and Rose Gridneff of Workshop in Hackney, with four high profile designers, from 10am–4pm on Wednesday, 9 September. Together, the designers will produce a single piece of work, which will be printed in an edition of 500 and will be given away as part of greengaged.

There are two available places and we would like to invite you to join in. Email us at here, telling us why you want to participate in no more than 100 words, and win a chance to spend a day collaborating with well known designers in a letterpress workshop. The competition closes on Friday 28 August.

+ Workshop
+ Three Trees Don't Make a Forest
+ Anna Gerber

Did you know that recycling one tonne of paper can save 7000 gallons of water, 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, 3 cubic yards of landfill space and 4000kw of energy!? On Friday afternoon, non profit enterprise Three Trees Don’t Make a Forest held a three hour sustainable print and paper workshop to explore how different print processes affect recyclability, and how you can reduce the impact through the design process.

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As part of the greenwash debate on Friday evening, Sophie Thomas (thomas.matthews) showed the above image. It really makes you think twice about our consumer culture, when we are faced with blank billboards. This grafitti was produced by Banksy (of course)... see a video of the artist celebrating the blank billboard here.

On Friday evening, the Greengaged week closed with a vibrant debate on Greenwashing. Chaired by Lucy Siegle, The Observer, panelists were John Grant (author of The Green Marketing Manifesto, co-founder of St Luke’s and London United), Chris Sherwin (Forum for the Future), Richard George (Plane Stupid), Ed Gillespie (Futerra), Stewart Rassier (Saatchi & Saatchi S) and Sophie Thomas (thomas.matthews).

The debate - “Should we believe the hype? Green Marketing, spin and substance”- asked the panelists to explore how, in the climate of economic down turn, we can create behavioural change in consumers who are bombarded by advertising and bored of greenwash? The delegates each stood to offer a 7 minute discussion with examples of greenwash.

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As part of the greengaged best practice case studies on Tuesday morning, Joshua Blackburn presented the work of five-year young communication design agency, Provokateur. Explaining the teams motivation to influence good behavioural change, he presented We Want Tap, their consumer campaign and product line. The campaign is simple, the ambition is big, “We want to develop an initiative to take on the bottled water industry” explained Joshua. “Bottled water has no ground to stand upon”, he explained “Its expensive, it generates waste …and 80% of people we tested could not tell the difference between bottled water or tap.” Explaining that people are buying a brand, not water, Joshua and the Provokateur team are “Giving tap water a facelift”. “In these richer times, this (sustainability) is the smarter way to do things”, Joshua concluded. Recognising the ambitious scale of We Want Tap, Design Week ran a front cover story in July 2008. To find out more, visit WeWantTap.com

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